Surrendering my heart’s Desire

5/11/24
 
The morning before our recent trip to Spain i donated blood.  When i prayed about it, i thought God was saying it was OK to donate.  Initially that proved true; i did fine flying and i was reasonably energetic touring Segovia the following day, when i’d normally be subject to jet lag.  But by Saturday i started coming down with a cold and on Sunday i spent most of the day in bed while the rest of our family had a picnic at a park.
 
i’ve now had that cold for a couple of weeks.  i’m finally on the mend, but it’s been a long haul.  i asked God if donating blood made me more susceptible to catching a cold.  He said yes, it did.  A virus had already been attacking me, but it hadn’t made much progress until i donated blood and subjected myself to the additional stress of protracted travel and jet lag.  If i were twenty-one i might have been able to shrug it off, but at seventy-one it takes my body longer to recover from stress and the virus leveraged all the stress to invade my lungs.
 
Needless to say, i won’t make that mistake again.  i need to lay hold of the wisdom God has given me to steward my health.  He likes that i donate blood and embrace the sacrificial giving it entails, but He is not calling me to compromise my health.  In the present instance i didn’t fully surrender to Him my desire to donate, so i ended up following my desire instead of following Him.  Like any other desire, my desire to give blood can rule my heart if it isn’t fully surrendered to Him.  God is my only true desire and all other desires must yield to Him!